Short Takes

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

July 2, 1995

-- Casey Kasem isn't letting the evolution of popular music slow him down after a quarter of a century of counting down his American Top 40. "Along the way, I have always thought that the changes in the music were refreshing," Kasem said on Friday. Kasem's American Top 40 is now syndicated to more than 1,000 radio stations on Westwood One Radio Network. "Casey Kasem has the best-known voice in radio," said Norm Pattiz, chief executive officer of Westwood One. He started Top 40 in Los Angeles in 1970.

-- There's star power behind the Major League Baseball expansion Arizona Diamondbacks: singer Glen Campbell and actors Billy Crystal and Louis Gossett Jr. A list released on Friday showed 18 investor groups have put up $108.5 million of the $130 million the franchise cost.

-- Gerry Spence, the fringed-leather-jacket-wearing lawyer, author and legal commentator on the O.J. Simpson trial, is turning media star. Spence will be host of a prime-time call-in show beginning July 7 on the CNBC cable channel. Spence said the show will be an extension of his desire to make a point with his courtroom work. "Long ago, I began to accept cases that I thought had a message in them," Spence said. He said those cases "permitted me to talk about what I considered wrongs in society."

-- The man who wrote, and largely lived, Drugstore Cowboy is back behind bars. James Fogle, 58, was arrested on Wednesday in the burglary of a pharmacy. Deputy prosecutor Ruth Vogel said he didn't know how long a sentence Fogle could get. In an interview on Friday at the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis, Wash., Fogle told The Chronicle of Centralia, Wash., that he's not sure how he arrived in town.

He made no secret of his drug habit. "I've been on a binge since my wife died [in June)," he said.

Fogle became a jailhouse celebrity in 1989 when Portland, Ore., filmmaker Gus Van Sant made a movie on Fogle's then-unpublished novel about a gang of four junkies who roamed the Northwest. Drugstore Cowboy, starring Matt Dillon, got rave reviews.